


convince yourself that this is normal

by drashian



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe, F/M, M/M, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Transgender
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-29
Updated: 2012-06-10
Packaged: 2017-11-06 05:30:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drashian/pseuds/drashian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony reveals one or two things about himself despite his misgivings.  It goes exactly as he knew it would.  But it still hurts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably the fic that I am proudest of in my entire fic-writing career. Also the hardest thing I have ever had to write. You're welcome.

Tony always knew that it was never really going to work with Pepper, but he pretended that it would for a while. He was good at pretending anyway.

Maybe she did love him, at some time, or maybe he was just projecting onto her. Sweeping her off of her feet into some comic book romance with a modern day superhero? Not quite the reality. The reality was fighting. Lots of fighting. Always sweetness afterward, creeping into each others' rooms to apologize quietly, but forgetting promises to be easier on each other by the morning.

It was to be expected, he knew that, but... He couldn't help but want it to work out. For his own sanity and for hers. He knew, though, that no matter how much he cared about her and her well-being, it hardly amounted to love. Not when the sheets between their sides of the bed remained so cold.

But he didn't want it to end like this.

It started with one of those nights, lying still next to each other, both of them not daring to be the first to turn to look at the other. Finally, he heard Pepper shift and he moved, too, meeting eyes. She smiled.

"How are you?" she said, and he tried to convince himself that this was normal.

"Same as always," he said truthfully.

She nodded. "I'm fine, too," she said. She bit her lip slightly then leaned forward and kissed him. Pulling back, she said, "I feel like we haven't seen each other in an age."

"Well, we've been back and forth from L.A. to New York, and hardly catching each other between flights," Tony said, even though she already knew all of this. "Hopefully the dust is settling by now."

"Well, you did cause a bit of damage to Manhattan. There's a certain obligation to repairs that you have."

"It wasn't _strictly_ my fault, you know. And I saved a lot of damage. You know, the whole nuclear strike thing."

Pepper rolled her eyes. "Do we really have to go through this whole tale of your amazing bravery? I've heard it quite a few times."

Tony grinned. "I'm just so impressive. Can't help talking about myself."

"Oh believe me. I've noticed." Pepper scooted closer to Tony, wrapping arms around him. They melded together and lay in silence for a moment.

Pepper was the first to move, shifting her weight and poising herself above Tony, leaning down, kissing him. He reached arms up onto her waist, fitting them right in the dip above her hipbones. She nipped him playfully on the lower lip, running one hand down his chest, hooking fingertips on the lip of the arc reactor briefly before sliding them down to right about his waistband. He kissed her deeply, digging fingers into her sides, before gently pushing her off of him. Pepper laid down next to him, opening her posture up expectantly. But he didn't crawl on top of her. He kissed her once, definitively, and lay back on the pillow.

"Sorry, Pep, just not the right time," he said, curling arms around her. She stiffened and pushed him off.

"It's never the right time, is it?"

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

She propped herself up on one arm. "We haven't had sex _once_ since we got together. And I know how you are with other girls, so don't try to say it's nothing unusual. Are you just not... attracted to me?"

"No! No, no, that's not it at all." Tony's heart beat loudly in his ears. "And don't you remember that one time after the benefit..."

Pepper looked at Tony like his hair had just turned to ravioli. "That. Was not sex. That was you going down on me in the limo."

Tony floundered for words. "But doesn't that count?"

"Hardly." Pepper sighed and rolled over, moving herself far away from him on the bed. "Good night, Tony."

Tony stared up at the ceiling. "Good night," he said weakly. His heart was still racing. This was why he didn't enter into committed relationships. Soon enough it came out.

They didn't speak at all the next day, Tony retreating down to his workshop to drown out his flickering doubts with grunge. Pepper left the day after for Chicago. They barely said goodbye, just a kiss on the cheek and curt promises of a quick return.

He knew he would have to end it soon.

She came back a week later and found him still working, bags under his eyes accentuated by the grime on his face. She locked him out of the workshop ("I was so close, Pepper! I almost had it!") and forced him to bed. They smiled and wrestled a bit like she had never been gone, like they'd never fought. Tony pinned her down by the shoulders then leaned down, kissing her hard. Her breath came raggedly as she paused, then kissed him back, her hands exploring the muscles of his back, running up and down the ridge of his spine. She gripped him tight as they kissed, teeth clacking for a moment as he tumbled over and she straddled him.

"I missed you," she managed breathily, then kissed him again, mouth moving down lips and jaw and neck. She supported herself on one hand, the other snaking up under his shirt and pushing down on hard muscles, slick with sweat. He let her take off his shirt. She'd hardly seen him shirtless, only a few times, and that was a rarity for him especially since the arc reactor had become a part of him. It wasn't quite embarrassment that kept his chest covered but almost a sense of secrecy, like if the world saw then they would know all of his best secrets. The dimmed glow from under cotton was already enough of a hint of what he hid inside his ribcage.

Pepper kissed down his clavicle, stopping to kiss around one edge of the metal. Tony's breath caught and it felt like he'd been holding his breath for a century in that moment from lips touching the scar tissue around it to coming back up to his face. "It's beautiful," she whispered. Tony cupped her cheek in his rough hand. "You're beautiful."

He pulled her shirt off next, her pale skin contrasting with the dark bra that quickly came off. Not like he'd never seen her naked but, God, she was so beautiful every time. His fingers found every crevice on her torso, stroked and pushed at every sensitive spot. She arched her back, hips grinding down onto his, and her hands met at his waistband. For a moment she hooked her fingers over it, about to start pulling his pants down, but his hands brushed the back of her hands and she stopped. Their eyes met and she looked confused but he just looked desperate. Probably the most emotional he had ever allowed himself to get around others.

His head felt like it was a thousand feet underwater, ready to implode at any moment from the pressure. She backed off from his pants but the mood was gone. She sighed despondently and unhooked her leg from him, coming to sit on her ankles beside him. Tony sat up halfway, breathing deeply to keep from giving in to the pressure he felt all around him. Blood rushed to every point on his body, making him too warm, too ready to run.

"What is it?" she said quietly and he knew that she had realized it was something more than just unattractiveness or even a low sex drive.

He considered for a moment, his eyes downcast. Pepper. He had trusted her with so much. She was beautiful and responsible and everything that he was missing and so good to him even when he was bad to her and to himself. She deserved the truth but Tony knew that if she reacted badly, it would be worse than ever before. Because nothing had hung in the balance when he told Obadiah and nothing had been at stake when he was forced to explain to Yinsen. But his relationship with Pepper was something he actually cared about (for once). And he knew deep in him that it was never going to work but he still pretended that it would and so he took a very long breath and decided to explain because that was the man that he was trying to become. Someone that Pepper could trust.

"It's not that I don't want to," he said quietly, concentrating with every muscle in his body on keeping his voice steady. "I just... I'm afraid."

Pepper frowned deeper. "Afraid of what?"

"That you won't... Look, I just need to be honest."

Her face went darker. "Yes, you do. Have you not been?"

Tony's stomach dropped down to the ground floor of Stark Tower. His mouth was suddenly dry but his eyes were too wet and he squeezed them shut, trying to whet his lips, trying to force sound out of them. Pepper gently touched his hand and he gripped his fists white-knuckledly. "I wasn't... I mean, I don't have... Well, honestly, okay. Let's just be frank. Okay. I wasn't born with, uh. Typical. Guy parts."

Pepper smiled like she had known all along. "Are you actually afraid that I'd judge you for having a small pe—"

"Pepper, I don't _have_ one. That's what I'm trying to tell you. I was born in what I guess is a girl's body. I lived my life like that for seventeen years." His eyes raised to meet hers and all that he saw was confusion. "Please, Pepper, I haven't lied to you about anything."

"But you were born a girl," she said carefully.

"In a sense, yes. I'm not a girl, I was never a girl, but my body..."

The last thing he had wanted to do was make Pepper look as betrayed as she did then.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she choked out, her eyes searching, desperate.

"It didn't seem relevant and you _know_ how people react to these things and—"

"Didn't seem relevant?" Pepper pushed herself off of the bed, standing up. "Really? I'm your girlfriend and you've been neglecting having sex with me for our whole relationship and it didn't seem relevant?"

Tony sat up and started to stand, tried to catch her, but she was already at the door. She exhaled loudly and put a hand on the doorknob.

"I just need some time."

She was gone and Tony fell back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling, cursing every inch of his own body and genetics and stupidity and short-sightedness and brokenness.

He had known that it wasn't going to work but all he had wanted to do was pretend for a while. But time was up.

She didn't come back for the rest of the next day. He moped around the Tower, hardly getting the energy to go to the workshop but he managed to get down there by mid-afternoon. He found himself feeling like a child again, absently touching his chest as if the next time he did he would find breasts there again. They had been gone for years. God, what was happening to him?

He didn't have to think about this kind of thing usually. It was all about working and making some public appearances and, oh right, saving the world, that happened too. Nothing about phallic absences on his daily itinerary. He dug in and concentrated and managed to get a bit of work done. He couldn't stop thinking about Pepper.

She showed up again late that night, slipping wordlessly into his room where he was staring out over the view across New York, counting lights because there was no hope of getting to sleep. He didn't turn over even though he knew her movements from the soft pad of the balls of her feet on the hardwood floor. She touched the bed, hesitated, lifted a leg onto it and sat behind him crosslegged. Tony rolled over.

"How are you?" she said but she already knew the answer from his raw face.

"Same as always," he said. It was still the truth.

"I'm fine, too," she said quietly, looking at her hands. "I don't hate you, you know."

Tony smiled as much as he could manage. "I hope not."

"And it's not that I think any less of you. In any sense. You're still just as much of a man as you always have been, whatever that means."

"Thank you." He meant it. She knew.

"And it's really not about you or your body or your childhood or anything."

She paused for a long beat. Tony tried to keep the blood from rushing to his head. He knew what was coming.

"I just don't think it's going to work."

He closed his eyes.

"I'm sorry. It's not just this. It's the fighting, and all of the—the time we spend apart, and then this whole thing on top of it where I feel like you don't even trust me enough t-to be honest, and..." She leaned over him and kissed his cheek. He brushed her hair back and met her eyes. "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry, too," he managed out, but from the look in her eyes he didn't have to elaborate.

"We're still friends and I'm still CEO and I still love you but not like that. Not like we're together. I just love you like a friend, like we both care about each other and that's not going away." She flushed. "I'm rambling."

"It's okay," Tony said, stroking her arm. "I love you, too."

She nodded. "I'm going, now."

"I know."

No chance of sleep tonight. Tony rolled over again and stared out the window, watching lights blink and people pass until the sun tinted the panes yellow and orange and JARVIS asked if he was okay and he said he wasn't but the AI didn't bother him beyond that and that was honestly a relief.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i promise i am trying not to be useless about updates but i got hit with a bunch of end of the year feelings (graduation will soon be over and then unrestricted summer writing time!) and writer's block but i'm trudging my way through it. i think it's just about over. hopefully this means more regular updates to both of my currently running fanfics!

Well, Pepper was still alive, which was unusual, certainly. Obadiah had known. Sure, he died years later, but he did. Yinsen. The man had operated on him. Some things had to be explained. And then... gone. Anyone from his childhood that had known him long ago had died with his parents or faded into the distant background. Pepper was neither dead nor irrelevant. Tony was thankful for that.

But she was gone. She left for LA that night and Tony didn't really have the heart to follow her. He avoided the shower and avoided other people which was not hard to do considering that most of the repairs were done and nobody else lived in the former Stark Tower. He sat at the kitchen counter, drinking cold coffee, drafting plans for modifications to make the Tower inhabitable by the team. The Avengers. If they would come live with him.

He was in a bit of a self-loathing rut so he didn't really think they would. Besides, half of them were gone to other worlds (Asgard and Sudan felt just about the same distance from New York right now) and the other half were under careful Nick Fury supervision. And that was something Tony Stark did not want to mess around in.

He could dream, though.

The days passed slowly and he still avoided the shower, still avoided changing clothes, still avoided looking for more than a passing moment at his body. Not just the more unsatisfactory bits, but even little things like the smallness of his hands or the way his arm muscles never quite grew the right way or his hairless feet made his eyes cloud over and his ears fill with the rush of blood. He hadn't felt like this for years. Why did all of this have to open up again?

JARVIS was delicate around him. Of course, he was another one who knew. But he didn't mind. Didn't say anything untoward about it but never really ignored it either. This was probably due to Tony's careful programming. But if he liked to pretend that his AI, his one steady friend, had feelings and cared about his own and actually gave a shit about what he felt, then yeah. Let him pretend. He liked playing games anyway.

Nick Fury was the last one who knew. Of course he did. Tony implicitly trusted Fury not to have told anyone else in S.H.I.E.L.D. He _shouldn't_ trust that man, but there was no alternative in his world.

Tony crumpled up all of his plans for Hulk and Thor-proof training rooms and went down the list.

Obadiah: dead. Yinsen: dead. Tutors: dead. Family friends: dead or irrelevant. JARVIS: a computer program. Fury: scary.

Pepper.

He didn't know what to do with that. To have someone—an actual, living person that was an active part of his life—know these things. So what he did was hide from everyone and everything. Including (especially) himself.

The days passed so slowly he hardly knew that time went on without him at all. He hadn't seen another human in something like two weeks and that was okay. He smelled bad anyway. And it had been disastrously long since he had changed clothes.

He didn’t even admit to JARVIS that he was lonely but when he woke up covered in sweat because he had fallen asleep on top of his work (again) and he had been dreaming rather violently about running to catch Pepper to catch Bruce to catch _any_ of them, really, and he had the terrible feeling that this was not the first time he had had that dream, well... Maybe he had to admit. It had been a while.

Speaking of a while. He realized that morning that the whole debacle had distracted him and his schedule had gone to shit and why, why hadn't JARVIS reminded him?

"JARVIS?" he cried out angrily, standing and starting off to his apartment.

"Yes, sir?" he replied and by God if he didn't sound like he knew what was coming.

"Why didn't you remind me?"

"About what, sir?"

"About my motherfucking _shots_ you incompetent asshole!" The elevator was going slower than usual, it felt like. It wasn't beyond the realm of possibility anyway.

"You were despondent and any attempts I made of making contact with you were quickly shunned."

"That's a bad excuse and you know it." Tony arrived at his floor and stalked off to his room.

He went to the back of his closet and with a wave of his hand, JARVIS moved aside a panel and gave him access to the perpetual supply of vials and syringes. It was a routine Tony had done a thousand times before. Drop the pants, prep the spot, fill up syringe, deep tissue injections every two weeks for the rest of his life. No big deal.

Oh, the price one had to pay for masculinity.

"Don't let me forget again," he said, clenching his fists.

"I'll try not to, sir," JARVIS said dryly. It had the finality of walking out of the room but without the corporeality that action would imply.

Tony sat alone, looking at his bare legs for a while. Tried not to notice the premature dip on the fabric of his boxers.

Maybe it was for the best that the day after someone showed up at his (metaphorical) doorstep.

If Tony had to pick who would be the first to arrive and pull him out of self pity, Bruce Banner would probably not be his top choice but he was pretty high up there. But he did and he looked at least as bedraggled as Tony felt, his shoes falling apart to reveal the bare flesh beneath them, his clothes even worse for wear than they had been on the Helicarrier. Bruce gave him a crooked smile and asked in a roundabout way for a place to stay and at this point, hell, Tony would have donated the entire Tower to him.

"Thanks for letting me in," he said, only somewhat concealing his wonder at the modernity (and the rapid recovery) that Stark Tower exhibited.

"Oh please. Thank you for coming back." And he played it off as a casual comment but his week was going nowhere good fast by himself.

They worked out rooming arrangements—there was no shortage of those in the Tower—and Bruce followed Tony down to his workshop to see what was on the slab. Admittedly, it was not much. Just a lot of plans that would never come to fruition and holy shit Tony didn't want to think about that because suddenly those plans would stop being just blueprints and—

"Hey, Tony, you okay?" Bruce said, frowning at the taller man. "You look..."

"I look terrible. I know." Same clothes for two weeks, no shower, barely any sleep and none of it in his own bed... yeah.

"What's going on?"

"Just work. A messy breakup too, I guess."

Bruce was silent for a beat. "I'm sorry."

Tony nodded and turned away. This was definitely not the road to go down but thankfully, Bruce wasn't exactly touchy-feely either.

"What's that?" Bruce said of the plans in front of Tony. And of course, of all of the things that he asked about, he had to ask about _this_.

"Just some blueprints. Probably not going to be made, but..." But Bruce was already picking them up and Tony winced as he saw the realization hit that a) the plans had the name Avengers tower, b) they included among them Hulk-proofing ideas, and c) Tony was probably the creepiest guy ever assuming that Bruce would be back and the whole team would be back and they would all live together in some kind of eternal slumber party.

Bruce looked up at him wide-eyed. "These are..."

"As I said, probably never going to be made. Just ideas, you know, just in case."

And Bruce actually smiled. Which was a really nice thing to see after so much time alone and Bruce's usual vague melancholy. A real smile. "It's great," he admitted. "You know what you're doing."

"I usually do," Tony bragged.

"I should say so," Bruce said and Tony knew that look, that appraising look that any scientist gave the glow in the middle of his chest. He didn't blame them. But sometimes it made him feel more like a living science fair demonstration than a human being.

They looked at each other and then the floor and Tony was becoming far too aware of the itch in his scalp from not washing his hair. He ran fingers through it, trying to figure out how messy it was. Bruce probably thought he was some kind of disgusting hermit. Which was not wholly untrue. But.

"Look, this has been wonderful and I'm really glad that you're here but if you'll excuse me, I'm kind of a mess," Tony said finally, gesturing vaguely at himself. "You are free to do whatever the fuck you feel like."

Bruce just sort of nodded and turned away, immersing himself in studying the blood filtration prototype before him. Tony didn't really blame him. It was genius. And Tony was filthy. So he left, only somewhat bothered by the doctor's quiet demeanor, and made it back to his apartment.

He hadn't really been aware of how long it was since he had undressed until he realized how unfamiliar his nakedness was and how much he smelled. Whoops. This whole self-consciousness thing? Yeah, that needed to stop. He kept eyes straight ahead in the shower, not a single flicker of a glance downward.

Half convinced that he would return back and Bruce Banner would not actually be in his house, Tony toweled his hair mostly dry, pulled on clean clothes, and came downstairs as casually as possible. But he was there, still, wandering with hands in pockets around, looking exceedingly out of place.

"Hey, no need to look like it's your first day of high school," Tony called as he turned the corner into the glass-walled room. "You're living here now."

"Staying here," Bruce corrected. "Temporarily."

"Yeah, you say that _now_ ," he replied, edging past Bruce to reach the device in front of him. "Have I shown you this yet?"

"Not yet," Bruce said, leaning in.

"Oh, you're gonna love this." As Tony explained what amounted to a better centrifuge—which might sound a bit like reinventing the wheel, but it was more like replacing the wheel with a hoverpad—Bruce donned his glasses, watching closely. Tony let himself be close to the other man, brush arms a bit, even, because even though he had felt like an imposter in his own skin for the past two weeks, there was something very calming in being in contact with another person. It let his nerves cool down for once.

They stayed like that, sidestepping around each other in surprisingly coordinated movements. Like they had always worked together. Tony bounced around, showing off the latest in his and his scientists' developments. All SI employees were on permanent leave and Tony was taking the time to tinker with all of their work, naturally. Bruce watched and smiled, sometimes offering a bit of advice. Still tiptoeing.

Eventually, they had exhausted everything of interest and the two of them ended up wandering back up to the living area. Their conversation turned from bioengineering (Tony still wasn't 100% convinced that it was impossible to implement the Iron Man suit inside of his body somehow) to idle gossip (the betting pool on how long it would be before they saw Clint and Natasha fucking grew impressively large) to nothing at all. The low mumble of the TV, almost always on, filled the silence as well as the constant whirr of machinery all through the Tower.

"Well, I guess I should be going to bed," Bruce said, standing, after a couple minutes of what Tony had thought was comfortable silence but maybe that was just him. He nodded, yeah, agreed, stood, they parted ways, he went up two stories, he made it all the way to his bed before he collapsed on it. He hadn't regretted going to bed alone quite this much in a very, very long time.


End file.
